


Whine and Dine

by Tabakat



Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 18:57:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17289584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabakat/pseuds/Tabakat
Summary: Summary: Tosh gets Owen Harper drunk with the best of intentions in mind.





	Whine and Dine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kabal42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kabal42/gifts).



> Beta: None  
> Rating: PG  
> Word Count: 1,780  
> Fandom: Torchwood  
> Pairings: None  
> Summary: Tosh gets Owen Harper drunk with the best of intentions in mind.   
> Notes: This was made with kabal_42 prompt in mind she wanted to know more of Owen’s past or a missing scene from Season Two before Reset.   
> Set before Reset. This is an old work and has previously been seen on my now defunct livejournal and my insanejournal  
> Spoilers: All of Torchwood Season1-2  
> Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood. This is a fan-work only. It is made for fun not profit. No money was made off this story nor will it be with the author’s knowledge or permission. No copyright infringement is intended. No offense is meant.

Dr. Owen Harper stared over the bay and tried to find comfort in its steady current. He’d worked for Torchwood for three years know. Jack was right, working for Torchwood had allowed him to save countless more lives than if he had continued to toil in the regular hospital, and he was good about letting Owen moonlight at the hospital in his off time, but still his life felt hollow.

Watching his fiancée slowly lose herself to tumor induced Alzheimer's had been soul wrenching, and the thought of losing her on the table had been devastating but was something Owen knew intellectually he would eventually be able to move past. Walking in to the operating room to see the whole surgical team as well as his lover dead and with tentacles coming out of her brain was the stuff of nightmares- than and now. Most days, Owen was if not over it- you never got over someone you loved- able to move on with his life, but today on the anniversary of the surgery, it was always hard. Suzie’s recent Lazarus impersonation hadn’t made things any easier.

“Cold-hearted, selfish old hag,” Owen muttered.

“Taken to talking to yourself, have you. That’s never a good sign.”

Owen started but didn’t turn around, “Tosh, what are you doing here.”

“Looking for you.” He didn’t know what to say to that, wasn’t really sure he believed her, so he didn’t reply. 

Tosh let the silence lengthen for awhile, standing a few meters away hands in her pockets seemingly unaffected by his coolness as she too took in the bay. If there was one thing her time in that prison facility had taught her it was patience, or at least how to appear patient.

Finally unable to take the silence a moment longer he tired again, “Toshiko, what are you doing here?” 

“Full names? Must be worst then I thought.”

“What?”

“Games, Owen? Thought we were past this.” The computer whiz sighed looking out over the water, letting the silence stretch. It soon became apparent that her college was going to play cold case not that she’d blame him, but she had no intention of letting him get away with it. “Suzie betrayed us all, Owen.”

“This.” Owen carefully enunciated, giving himself away as he gestured around into the night, “has absolutely nothing to do with, Suzie.”

“I know.” Tosh soft voice came from behind him seconds before she was wrapping her arms around him in a hug.

“How can you possibly- Jack! I’ll kill him!” 

“Jack hasn’t told me anything. I think you should though.”

“It’s nothing.”

“So much nothing that you almost ratted on yourself? Come on, Owen, who am I going to tell? Who else are you going to tell?”

“No one. I’m not going to tell anyone, Toshiko.” He hadn’t turned around, and he hadn’t known her to move all that slowly so when she moved up behind him, wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head on his back, he jumped a mile. She only made shushing noises and refused to let him go. He had unknowingly relaxed back into her arms for several minutes before she spoke again.

“Right then, you know the really annoying thing about best friends, Owen? We don’t let you get away with shit assed blanket statements like that!”

“Toshiko Sato! Where did you learn language like that?” He scolded.

“I’ve worked with you and Jack for how long? And don’t go changing the subject! This is how it’s going to work. Where going to shopping where we are going to get some wine for me, because I’ve had a hard day too and refuse to drink that swill you call beer, whatever you want for dinner is fine. We’ll grab take-away and head to my house for the night.”

“I’ll cook.”

“What?”

“I’ll cook.” Owen said fishing out his keys and shepherding the stunned woman to the car.

“You’ll- you cook?” Tosh asked stunned by this new revelation as much as by his lack of resistance to her plan. 

“Rather good at it actually, it’s late though. How does some simple pasta, a salad, and some fresh bread?”

“That- that sounds lovely.” Tosh said wondering if she dared take this gift at face value or if she had better scan Owen for sign of alien tampering. She decided to hold off, Owen wasn’t trying to hurt her, and wither he would admit it or not, the man needed a friend tonight not a torchwood operative.

About an hour and a half later, Tosh and Owen sat with their dinner at her couch and coffee table. She had quietly axed the idea of setting the dinning room table. For once, Tosh had no intention of seducing Owen. She wasn’t going to turn down a home cooked meal, and she was going to allow him to relax and maybe even hide a bit in the actions of cooking, but she was not going to let him play himself or her. This was too important.

“This is excellent. Did your mum teach you to cook?”

Owen made a rude noise. “Not even you Tosh.” The warning was clear, “But, thanks for the compliment and no.”

Family was off limits then, “So when did you learn to cook?” She said taking a sip of wine.

“Not going to let this go are you?”

“How it is you’ve been hiding amazing culinary skills, when you can’t make a decent cup of coffee?” She asked innocently?

“Not that. This—THIS!”’

Tosh made no replay. “ I can make an amazing cup of coffee, you know I just don’t. “

“Why?”  
“I’ve always loved coffees and teas. I was a stressed out med student and I took a class in the dos and don’t’s of gourmet drink making. It’s how we met- my fiancée and me. We were both taking the class, but somehow. I always ended up being the one that made the drinks. After she got ill, it became bittersweet. It was a little thing that was always us, but now she couldn’t even have made tea from a teabag if she wanted to.”

She let him talk, it was obvious he had been holding it all in to long. It could only do him good to let it go. “I must be pissed to be telling you all this.” Owen said. 

“The interesting thing about Retcon, apparently it doesn’t works as well if the memories were tampered with to start.” Tosh said giving him a small smile in encouragement. 

“OH GOD! Toshiko-I-“

“Adam was an alien trying to survive, for as much damage as he did, there was some good. You’re a messed up-socially inept- womanizing-genius, Owen I get that, but you’re also my friend so…This—THIS?”

“I don’t know why you’re here. “ Tosh was trying to decide if a good old-fashioned decking was called for when he continued, “Jack convinced me that I could save the most lives at Torchwood. I was ready to give it up. Seeing a tentacle creature, climbing out of your dead fiancée’s brain, makes you wonder what the bloody hell you’re doing it all for. All my medical training- I was specializing in neurology at the time- did he tell you that? Not only was my medical expertise worthless, but it was not even something natural and human that killed her. It was a bloody fucking alien! 

Not only was she dead, but everyone in the room with her. It was horrible. Everything I have seen and done since. As graphic as they are, and that is the scene I see in my nightmares. I couldn’t do anything. I could not save anyone. All those lives lost for what? Nothing. I walked out on him. Persistent ass followed me to the grave site. After he let me use him as a punching bag, I let him convince me to come work for him.”

“That’s- okay there’s nothing I can say that’s not going to sound like a platitude. But you’ve got to look at the good you’ve done since.”

“I came to Torchwood to save lives, Tosh, instead I watch my friends and co-workers. Kill themselves and come back, only to betray their teammates and what they stood for. I use my skills to carve things up, not put them back together. I find out how best to stop, harm and kill things! I’ve become a doctor of Death! I flirt from woman to woman- the one chance I thought I had at a real relationship flew through the rift to get away from me.”

“Okay now you’re just feeling sorry for yourself! Owen Harper. Do you have any idea, why I came to Torchwood? I can’t even talk about it, or Jack might kill me, but it was to protect my family. Lot of good that would have done them, because they were going to be used against me repeatedly. I got caught and was going to be held, questioned, tortured, to go on indefinitely, until they got tired of me- an object lesson. Jack saved me from that, but I can never see my family again.

Suzie was crazy and she betrayed us all. Not just you.

Yes you’ve used you’re skills in the autopsy bay a lot. However, how many times have you put us back together? Brought Jack back? Made him more comfortable? Came up with a vaccine for an alien virus? Saved an alien life? Remember when you helped that alien birth her child?

And if you’re responsible for finding the weaknesses in a species, with Torchwood Tower gone, I’m the one that has to build the weapons. I guess that makes us a pair of Grim Reapers.

Grieve you’re fiancée. Rail at Suzie. Leave the rest off.

As for the women? Yeah you’re a womanizing sod. Can’t help you there.” She tossed a pillow at him. 

“If I’m such a womanizing sod, then why are you still attracted to me?” Owen asked.

“No clue. Have you been pinching Jack’s 25th century pheromone cologne?”

“No! One time, with an attraction spray is enough for me!”

“Owen you didn’t!”

“Like you’ve never taken something!”

“Still that’s dangerous…”

“Don’t tell Jack, and I won’t tell Ianto you use the CCTV to film the two of them.”

“Jack wouldn’t care if I did.”

“That’s why I said I won’t tell Ianto.”

Tosh through blankets at him and pointed to the couch. “Make yourself at home, and Owen?”

“Yeah?”

“From now on, talk to me.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Wait a minute, Tosh?”

“What”.

“Those pheromones come in cologne?”

Tosh couldn’t hide a small giggle. “Yep you’re pissed. Goodnight Owen.”


End file.
